NEW YORK, Jan. 26, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- XBRL US announced that it had published the third set of freely available, approved rules and guidance developed by the Data Quality Committee (DQC). These rules are designed for issuers to use to identify and correct errors in their SEC filings. Software and service providers are expected to have incorporated the rules into their tools, effective immediately. The DQC, which is funded through the Center for Data Quality, is responsible for developing guidance and validation rules that can prevent or detect inconsistencies or errors in XBRL data filed with the SEC and focuses on data quality issues that adversely affect data analysis.

The new rules published in the latest set cover additional elements that should not be reported as negative values in an XBRL document. The new rules also clarify the appropriate combinations of members and axes, providing additional tests of members and axes that issuers can apply. A total of twelve rules have been published. The DQC rules help SEC filers identify and address potential problem areas such as negative value errors, incorrect element relationships, the use of deprecated elements that are no longer supported, the inappropriate use of axes and member combinations, and erroneous use of dates. These are common problems for filers and correcting these errors can significantly improve the quality of a company's filing.

"More and more large global data and analytical tool providers rely on XBRL-formatted financials for the corporate data they provide to investors," said Campbell Pryde, President and CEO of XBRL US. "That makes it even more critical for public company filers to use these freely available rules to make sure they are producing the best quality financials."

XBRL US is the non-profit consortium for XBRL business reporting standards in the U.S. and it represents the business information supply chain. Its mission is to support the implementation of XBRL business reporting standards through the development of taxonomies for use by U.S. public and private sectors, with a goal of interoperability between sectors, and by promoting XBRL adoption through marketplace collaboration. XBRL US has developed taxonomies for U.S. GAAP, credit rating and mutual fund reporting under contract with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and has developed a taxonomy for corporate actions. http://xbrl.us